It is the two volumes entitled the "Principles of Ethics" to which we shall lastly invite attention. The six parts of which this work is composed were published in an irregular manner. Part I., presenting the data of ethics, was issued in 1879; Part IV., a treatise on "Justice," in 1891; Parts II. and III., which set forth respectively the inductions of ethics and the ethics of individual life, and which, along with Part I., form the first volume, were issued in 1892; Parts V. and VI., which treat respectively of negative beneficence and positive beneficence, were issued in 1893, and, along with Part IV., constitute the second volume. With regard to the "Principles of Ethics," considered as a whole, it should be noted that the author was prompted to prepare the work, notwithstanding the ill health by which he was incessantly interrupted, by the conviction that the establishment of rules of conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now that moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative. Those who reject the current creed appear to assume that the controlling agency conferred by it may safely be thrown aside. On the other hand, those who defend the current creed allege that, in the absence of the guidance it yields, no guidance can exist, divine commandments being, in their opinion, the only possible guides. Dissenting from both of these beliefs, Mr. Spencer has had for his primary purpose in the two volumes under review to show that, apart from any supposed supernatural basis, the principles of ethics have a natural basis. In these two volumes this natural basis is set forth, and its corollaries are elaborated. If the conclusions to which the general law of evolution introduces us are not in all cases as definite as might be wished, yet our author submits that they are more definite than those to which we are introduced by the current creed. Complete definiteness is not, of course, to be expected. Right regulation of the actions of so complex a being as man, living under conditions so complex as those presented by a society, evidently forms a subject-matter unlikely to admit of specific statements throughout its entire range.

The principal inductions drawn from the data collected in the first of these volumes may be set forth in a few sentences. Multitudinous proofs are brought forward of the fact that the ethical sentiment prevailing in different societies, and in the same society under different conditions, are sometimes diametrically opposed. In Europe and in the United States to have committed a murder disgraces for all time a man's memory, and disgraces for generations all who are related to him. By the Pathans, however, a contrary sentiment is displayed. One who had killed a Mellah (priest) and failed to find refuge from the avengers, said at length: "I can but be a martyr; I will go and kill a Sahib." He was hanged after shooting a sergeant, perfectly satisfied "at having expiated his offence." The prevailing ethical sentiment in England is such that a man who should allow himself to be taken possession of and made an unresisting slave would be regarded with scorn; but the people of Drekete, a slave-district of Fiji, "said it was their duty to become food and sacrifices for the chiefs," and that "they were honored by being considered adequate to such a noble task." Less extreme, though akin in nature, is the contrast between the feelings which the history of Englishmen has recorded within a few centuries. In Elizabeth's time, Sir John Hawkins initiated the slave-trade, and, in commemoration of the achievement, was allowed to put in his coat-of-arms: "a demi-moor proper, bound with a cord,"--the honorableness of his action being thus assumed by himself, and recognized by Queen and public. At the present day, on the other hand, the making slaves of men, called by Wesley "the sum of all villanies," is regarded in England with detestation; and for many years the British government maintained a fleet to suppress the slave-trade. Again, peoples who have emerged from the primitive family-and-clan organization, hold that one who is guilty of a crime must himself bear the punishment, and it is thought extreme injustice that the punishment should fall upon any one else. The remote ancestors of the English people thought and felt differently, as do still the Australians, whose "first great principle with regard to punishment is that all the relatives of a culprit, in the event of his not being found, are implicated in his guilt: the brothers of the criminal conceive themselves to be quite as guilty as he is." Then, too, among civilized peoples the individualities of women are so far recognized that the life and liberty of a wife are not supposed to be bound up with those of her husband; and she now, having obtained a right to exclusive possession of property, contends for complete independence, domestic and political. It is, or was, otherwise in Fiji. The wives of the Fijian chiefs consider it a sacred duty to suffer strangulation on the deaths of their husbands. A woman who had been rescued by an Englishman "escaped during the night, and, swimming across the river, and presenting herself to her own people, insisted upon the completion of the sacrifice which she had in a moment of weakness reluctantly consented to forego." Another foreign observer tells of a Fijian woman who loaded her rescuer "with abuse, and ever afterwards manifested the most deadly hatred towards him." In England and on the Continent the religious prohibition of theft and the legal punishment of it are joined with a strong social reprobation, so that the offence of a thief is never condoned. In Beloochistan, on the other hand, quite contrary ideas and feelings are current. There "a favorite couplet is to the effect that the Biloch who steals and murders, secures Heaven to seven generations of ancestors." In England and the United States reprobation of untruthfulness is strongly expressed, alike by the gentleman and the laborer. In many parts of the world it is not so. In Blantyre, for example, according to MacDonald, "to be called a liar is rather a compliment." Once more: English sentiment is such that the mere suspicion of incontinence on the part of a woman is enough to blight her life; but there are peoples whose sentiments entail no such effect, and, in some cases, a reverse effect is produced: "Unchastity is, with the Wetyaks, a virtue." It seems, then, that in respect of all the leading divisions of human conduct, different races of men, and the same races at different stages, entertain opposite beliefs, and display opposite feelings.

In Mr. Spencer's opinion, the evidence here brought to a focus ought to dissipate once for all the belief in a moral sense, as commonly entertained. A long experience of mankind, however, prevents him from indulging in such an expectation. Among men at large, lifelong convictions are not to be destroyed either by conclusive arguments or multitudinous facts. Only to those who are not by creed or cherished theory committed to the hypothesis of a supernaturally created human species will the evidence above summed up prove that the human mind has no originally implanted conscience. Mr. Spencer himself at one time espoused the doctrine of the intuitive moralists, but it has gradually become clear to him that the qualifications required practically obliterate the doctrine as enunciated by them. It has become clear to him, in other words, that if among civilized folk the current belief is that a man who robs and does not repent will be eternally damned, while an accepted proverb among the Bilochs is, that "God will not favor a man who does not steal and rob," it is impossible to hold that men have in common an innate perception of right and wrong.

At the same time, while the inductions drawn by Mr. Spencer from the data of ethics show that the moral-sense doctrine in its original form is not true, they also show that it adumbrates a truth, and a much higher truth. For the facts cited, chapter after chapter, unite in proving that the sentiments and ideas current in each society become adjusted to the kinds of activity predominating in it. A life of constant external enmity generates a code in which aggression, conquest, revenge, are inculcated, while peaceful occupations are reprobated. Conversely, a life of settled internal amity generates a code inculcating the virtues conducing to harmonious co-operation,--justice, honesty, veracity, regard for others' claims. The implication is that, if the life of internal amity continues unbroken from generation to generation, there must result not only the appropriate code, but the appropriate emotional nature,--a moral sense adapted to the moral requirements. Men so conditioned will acquire to the degree needful for complete guidance that innate conscience which the intuitive moralists erroneously supposed to be possessed by mankind at large. There needs but a continuance of absolute peace externally and a rigorous insistence on non-aggression internally, to insure the moulding of men into a form naturally characterized by all the virtues. This general induction is re-enforced by especial induction. Now as displaying this high trait of nature, now as displaying that, Mr. Spencer has instanced various uncivilized peoples who, inferior to us in other respects, are morally superior to us. He has also pointed out that such peoples are, one and all, free from inter-tribal antagonisms. The peoples showing this connection between external and internal peacefulness on the one hand, and superior morality on the other, are of various races. In the Indian Hills are found some who are by origin Mongolian, Kelarian, Dravidian; in the forests of Malacca, Burma, and in secluded parts of China exist such tribes of yet other bloods; in the East Indian archipelago are some belonging to the Papuan stock; in Japan there are the amiable Ainos, who have no traditions of internecine strife; and in North Mexico exists yet another such people unrelated to the rest, the Pueblos. Our author holds that no more conclusive proof could be wished than that supplied by these isolated groups of men, who, widely remote in locality and differing in race, are alike in the two respects that circumstances have long exempted them from war, and that they are now organically good. May we not reasonably infer, asks Mr. Spencer, in conclusion, that the state reached by these small, uncultured tribes may be reached by the great cultured nations, when the life of internal amity shall be unqualified by the life of external enmity?

We bring to an end our review of the "Synthetic Philosophy" by pointing out that the ethical doctrine constituting the culmination of the system which is set forth in the "Principles of Ethics" is fundamentally a corrected and elaborated version of the doctrine propounded in "Social Statics" issued as long ago as 1850. The correspondence between the two works is shown not only by the coincidence of their constructive divisions, but also by the agreement of their cardinal ideas. As in the one, so in the other, Man, in common with lower creatures, is held to be capable of indefinite change by adaptation to conditions. In both he is regarded as undergoing transformation from a nature appropriate to his aboriginal wild life, to a nature appropriate to a settled civilized life; and in both this transformation is described as a moulding into a form fitted for harmonious co-operation. In both works, too, this moulding is said to be effected by the repression of certain primitive traits no longer needed, and the development of needful traits. As in the first work, so in this last, the great factor in the progressive modification is shown to be sympathy. It was contended in "Social Statics," as it is contended in the "Principles of Ethics," that harmonious social co-operation implies that limitation of individual freedom which results from sympathetic regard for the freedoms of others; and that the law of equal freedom is the law in conformity to which equitable individual conduct and equitable social arrangements co-exist. Mr. Spencer's theory in 1850 was, as his theory still is, that the mental products of Sympathy which constitute what is called "the moral sense," arise as fast as men are disciplined into social life; and that along with them arise intellectual perceptions of right human relations, which become clearer as the form of social life becomes better. Further, in the earlier work it was inferred, as it is inferred in the latest, that there is being effected a conciliation of individual natures with social requirements; so that there will eventually be achieved the greatest individuation, along with the greatest mutual dependence,--an equilibrium of such kind that each, in fulfilling the wants of his own life, will aid in fulfilling the wants of all other lives. We observe, finally, that, in the first work, there were drawn essentially the same corollaries respecting the rights of individuals and their relations to the State that are drawn in the "Principles of Ethics."

A word may be said in conclusion about the difference between the relation of Mr. Spencer on the one hand and Darwin on the other to the thought of the Nineteenth Century. The fact is not to be lost sight of that the principles of the Evolutionary, or, as Mr. Spencer prefers to term it, the Synthetic, philosophy were formulated before the publication of the "Origin of Species." What the ultimately general acceptance of the theory propounded in Darwin's work did for Mr. Spencer was precisely this: it greatly strengthened the biological evidence for the evolutionary hypothesis. That hypothesis was upheld, however, by evidence drawn not merely from biology, but from many other sources. Moreover, while the Darwinian theory of natural selection, supplemented as it was by the adoption of the Lamarkian factors,--the effect of use and disuse and the assumed transmissibility of acquired character,--merely attempted to explain the mode in which the changes in organic life have taken place upon the earth, the evolutionary hypothesis put forth by Mr. Spencer professed to be applicable to the whole sphere of the knowable. It is further to be borne in mind that Mr. Spencer has devoted a large part of his life to tracing in detail the applications of his fundamental principles to social, political, religious, and ethical phenomena. Darwin, on the other hand, strictly confined himself to the biological field, and left to disciples the task of indicating the bearing of the Darwinian theory upon sociology, theology, and morals.

AUTHORITIES.

The Complete Works of Herbert Spencer (The Synthetic Philosophy).

Also, "Facts and Comments," by Herbert Spencer (Appleton's).

John Fiske's "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy."

F.H. Collins's "Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy."

A.D. White's "Herbert Spencer: The Completion of the Synthetic Philosophy."